The Shallow End of the Pool

It's going to be tough writing about "The Village," just because I have to be real careful to not give anything away. I will say that I really liked this film, although it's not quite the film I expected it to be. Lots of people didn't like it, and it has been savaged by most critics, but I think that is for the same reason: it wasn't exactly the same kind of film that it was advertised as being. If you go into it with an open mind and ignore what others have told you, then I think it really is a great experience, and unlike any other movie I have seen in a long while.

That said, it's not perfect, and I think some things about it were never adequately explained (again, this is going to be difficult without giving anything away). The bottom line, though, is that I thought enough about the film to go through the message boards on IMDB to see what others thought about those same issues, and quite a few of my questions were answered. "The Village" definitely requires a second viewing to take all of these things in.

My one big complaint about the movie, though, is that I think writer-director M. Night Shyamalan has become a bit too hung up on putting shocking twists into his endings. He doesn't need to do this, as he really is a gifted filmmaker, and the ideas presented at the end of "The Village" really fascinated me. In fact, I think the whole movie could have been carried with the ending as its main plot, instead of just the climax. It really would have been a fascinating character study; as it is now, we really didn't get any time to see what was going on inside these characters' minds. All in all, though, "The Village" really stayed with me for a long time after I saw it and made me think. Not something you usually get from a summer movie.